Digital cameras and digital video cameras are becoming more prevalent in various electronic devices of today's electronics. It is common for cameras to be included in mobile phones, handheld devices, and portable/laptop computers. Because such digital cameras and digital video cameras are becoming cheaper to manufacture and are being realized in smaller packages, the demand for devices to include such cameras is increasing. As a result, more and more functionality for these cameras system is also being demanded.
For example, cameras that are mounted to laptop computers, mobile phones and the like have typically been mounted in a fixed position such that any focal path of an optical train associated with the camera system was set relative to the device. That is, to point the camera in a different direction, the entire device needs to be maneuvered. Thus, a laptop computer having a camera pointing straight out of the view screen would require a user to point the view screen at whatever the user wishes to capture as a picture or video. This has been a problem of the past in that a user, by pointing the camera at the subject (and consequently pointing the view screen as well because of the fixed position of the camera), can now no longer see the view screen to properly align/adjust a capture area since the view screen is now pointing away from the user along with the camera.
One conventional solution to having a fixed position camera in various devices has been to mount the camera system in a maneuverable harness such that the focal path of the camera may be rotated in various directions without moving the rest of the device. Thus, a laptop computer screen may include a swivel-mounted camera at the top of the view screen that may be rotated as much as 180 degrees backwards to capture images on the opposite side of the view screen.
Such maneuverable cameras solved the problem of not being able to see the view screen when taking pictures or capturing video, but introduced several new problems. Such new problems include typical problems always associated with maneuverable devices requiring electronic connections inside the maneuverable part, such as flexible wiring and connection points. These flexible wiring accommodations are not only more expensive, but are far more prone to fail with far less use. Thus, even though maneuverable camera systems solved the original problem, the implementation and application left a lot to be desired.
In another conventional solution, a device requiring more than a focal path for a camera in an opposite direction of a view screen may be manufactured to have the camera system simply mounted to face the opposite direction. This solution, however, then restricted the camera use to subjects on the opposite side of the view screen. Thus, in applications where the camera should point in the same direction as the view screen, such as a video conferencing situation, then the user could not simultaneously be captured by the camera and also view a feed on the view screen from somewhere else.
In response to this, some device manufacturers have designed devices having two separate camera systems: one for a direction which points the same direction as the view screen and one that points in the opposite direction away from the view screen. For example, FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of a conventional camera system 100 having two distinct cameras that are pointed in opposite or relatively opposite optical directions. Generally speaking, conventional camera systems having two cameras employ two separate camera blocks. As can be seen the conventional multi-camera system 100 of FIG. 1, a first camera block 101 includes a first optical train 105 situated to focus incident light upon a first sensor 110. The first sensor 110 typically includes a first pixel array 111 for capturing incident light in a known pixel-by-pixel manner. The optical information may then be sent to a processing block 130 for processing and storage.
Similarly, a second camera block 151 is also included in the conventional multi-camera system 100. The second camera block 151 also includes an optical train 155, a sensor 150, a pixel array 151 and a processing block 180 that operate in conjunction with other similar to the first camera block 101 described above. However, the first camera block 101 and the second camera block 151 are autonomous and do not in any manner interact with each other. In this sense, each camera block 101 and 151 is independent and typically disposed on separate integrated circuits (ICs) or separate electronic circuit boards (ECBs). As such, despite having two cameras in the multi-camera system 100 (which may be coupled to an overall system processor (not shown) for manipulation and control) each one requires a specific amount of space, power, and cost in the overall system 100 implementation. Thus, in most cases having two cameras in the multi-camera system 100 results in twice the cost, twice the implementation space and twice the power requirements over a system with only one camera.
While this solution addresses the problems discussed above, the space requirements, power consumption, and manufacturing costs are typically more than doubled to accommodate the two-camera solution. Having two distinct and separate camera systems is a bulky inefficient and wasteful solution to the problems presented above.